‘Housing-Based Welfare'? Empirical Perspectives from the UK

Economic crisis, fiscal austerity, conservative policies and the new demography of ageing societies have given rise to the idea of ‘asset-based welfare’ as a key complement of the UK’s shrinking welfare state. For instance, concerning elderly care, retirement and education, housing wealth has become central to family welfare through life course and across generations. However, given variations in housing wealth across regional and local markets, between ‘boom-and-bust’ cycles, and across socioeconomic groups and age cohorts, positioning housing at the core of an ‘asset-based welfare’  regime should be questioned. In this paper, we scrutinise people’s views and strategies towards what might be paraphrased as ‘housing‐based welfare’. What are the opportunities and limitations for positioning housing wealth as a base for family welfare for different cohorts and socioeconomic groups? By analysing 100 in-depth interviews with homeowners (with or without mortgages) and social and private tenants, we conclude that socioeconomic inequality challenges the potential for housing to form an ‘asset-based welfare’ system. The affluent have various assets to engage in the provision for their own and their children’s welfare with no need to resort to the wealth embedded in their home. For marginal homeowners, relying on housing wealth might result in spirals of debt and drop them out of homeownership whereas long-term tenants are least able to afford alternative welfare provisions. Yet, numerous participants pursue (re)-active strategies of ‘housing-based welfare’ by traditional routes – building up housing careers in order to live rent-free and eventually downsize – or increasingly by letting out buy-to-let or inherited property. However, many of these participants are unsure of the potential of ‘housing-based welfare’ in the long term since they have ‘no crystal ball to look into the future’ in order to manage complex personal, familial and societal risks; this, in turn, reinforces social and familial solidarity.